lundi 19 juin 2017

Station Kicks off Week with Solar Array Study and Biological Research

ISS - Expedition 52 Mission patch.

June 19, 2017

Flying over the Earth. Animation Credit: NASA

Robotics controllers completed the unloading and set up of the third and final external experiment delivered last week aboard the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Inside the International Space Station, the Expedition 52 crew studied a variety of life science including plant growth, bone loss and cardiac biology.

Over the weekend, engineers on the ground remotely operated the Canadarm2 to extract the Roll Out Solar Array from Dragon. The experiment, also known as ROSA, will remain attached to the Canadarm2 over seven days to test the effectiveness of the advanced, flexible solar array that rolls out like a tape measure.

Image above: The Roll Out Solar Array, also known as ROSA, was deployed June 18 from the tip of the Canadarm2. Image Credit: NASA.

Flight Engineer Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson set up the Seedling Growth-3 botany study today that is researching how plant cells respond to lighting conditions in microgravity. Fischer also installed samples in a NanoRacks facility for an educational research project that is studying the effects of radiation damage on synthetic DNA.

Whitson measured bone loss in mice for the Rodent Research-5 study. Results may improve the health of astronauts living in space and humans on Earth with bone diseases. Whitson later moved onto the Cardiac Stem Cells experiment that seeks to understand the accelerated aging process that takes place in space.